Isabella, Three Sailing Ships and a Con Man

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Isabella, Three Sailing Ships and a Con Man
Written by Dario Fo
Original language Italian

Isabella, Three Sailing Ships and a Con Man (Italian title: Isabella, tre caravelle e un cacciaballe) [1] is a 1963 two-act play by Italian playwright Dario Fo, the recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature. Some people got angry: Fo received threatening letters, was assaulted in Rome with Rame by Fascist groups who also threw rubbish at them, while another performance was disrupted by a bomb scare. [2] He recounted this event in the prologue of Johan Padan and the Discovery of the Americas .

Italian language Romance language

Italian is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family. Italian, together with Sardinian, is by most measures the closest language to Vulgar Latin of the Romance languages. Italian is an official language in Italy, Switzerland, San Marino and Vatican City. It has an official minority status in western Istria. It formerly had official status in Albania, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro (Kotor) and Greece, and is generally understood in Corsica and Savoie. It also used to be an official language in the former Italian East Africa and Italian North Africa, where it plays a significant role in various sectors. Italian is also spoken by large expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia. In spite of not existing any Italian community in their respective national territories and of not being spoken at any level, Italian is included de jure, but not de facto, between the recognized minority languages of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Romania. Many speakers of Italian are native bilinguals of both standardized Italian and other regional languages.

Italians nation and ethnic group native to Italy

The Italians are a Romance ethnic group and nation native to the Italian peninsula and its neighbouring territories. Most Italians share a common culture, history, ancestry or language. Legally, all Italian nationals are citizens of the Italian Republic, regardless of ancestry or nation of residence and may be distinguished from people of Italian descent without Italian citizenship and from ethnic Italians living in territories adjacent to the Italian Peninsula without Italian citizenship. The majority of Italian nationals are speakers of Italian, or a regional variety thereof. However, many of them also speak another regional or minority language native to Italy; although there is disagreement on the total number, according to UNESCO there are approximately 30 languages native to Italy.

Dario Fo Italian actor, playwright, comedian, singer-songwriter, theater director, painter, and political activist

Dario Fo was an Italian actor, playwright, comedian, singer, theatre director, stage designer, songwriter, painter, political campaigner for the Italian left wing and the recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature. In his time he was "arguably the most widely performed contemporary playwright in world theatre". Much of his dramatic work depends on improvisation and comprises the recovery of "illegitimate" forms of theatre, such as those performed by giullari and, more famously, the ancient Italian style of commedia dell'arte.

Contents

Plot summary

The play is considered "an attempt to demystify and debunk the traditional history-book image" of Christopher Columbus. Fo said: "I wanted to attack those Italian intellectuals who, with the centre-left and the Socialist Party in the government, had discovered power and its advantages and leapt on it like rats on a piece of cheese. I wanted to dismantle a character who had been embalmed as a hero in school history books, whereas he is in fact an intellectual who tries to keep afloat within the mechanisms of power, play games with the King and be cunning with power figures, only to end up reduced to a wretch." [1]

Christopher Columbus Italian explorer, navigator, and colonizer

Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer, navigator, and colonist who completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain. He led the first European expeditions to the Caribbean, Central America, and South America, initiating the permanent European colonization of the Americas. Columbus discovered the viable sailing route to the Americas, a continent which was not then known to the Old World. While what he thought he had discovered was a route to the Far East, he is credited with the opening of the Americas for conquest and settlement by Europeans.

Isabella... is a play-within-a-play wherein an actor condemned to death (for performing the works of a banned author) is granted a last wish to perform one last play. He performs a history of Christopher Columbus, of which Roberto Rebora, writing in Sipario in 1963, says:

The play about Columbus presents the Genovese hero as an obsessive, wily individual, pitting his wits against Isabella, Filippo, Giovanna the madwoman, the (Spanish) court, sailing ships, enemies, a trial, and eventual obscurity, a consequence of the fact that cunning and unscrupulousness (even to honourable ends) is not enough if the powers that be are not on your side.' [3]

Production history

The play was first produced at the Teatro Odeon in Milan on 6 September 1963, in a production directed by Fo himself. It was later broadcast on RAI 2 in May 1977, and revived at the Centro Dramatico Nacional in Valencia, Spain in 1992 (again directed by Fo).

Milan Italian city

Milan is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city in Italy after Rome, with the city proper having a population of 1,372,810 while its metropolitan city has a population of 3,245,308. Its continuously built-up urban area has a population estimated to be about 5,270,000 over 1,891 square kilometres. The wider Milan metropolitan area, known as Greater Milan, is a polycentric metropolitan region that extends over central Lombardy and eastern Piedmont and which counts an estimated total population of 7.5 million, making it by far the largest metropolitan area in Italy and the 54th largest in the world. Milan served as capital of the Western Roman Empire from 286 to 402 and the Duchy of Milan during the medieval period and early modern age.

Valencia Municipality in Spain

Valencia, officially València, on the east coast of Spain, is the capital of the autonomous community of Valencia and the third-largest city in Spain after Madrid and Barcelona, with around 800,000 inhabitants in the administrative centre. Its urban area extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of around 1.6 million people. Valencia is Spain's third largest metropolitan area, with a population ranging from 1.7 to 2.5 million depending on how the metropolitan area is defined. The Port of Valencia is the 5th busiest container port in Europe and the busiest container port on the Mediterranean Sea. The city is ranked at Beta-global city in the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Valencia is integrated into an industrial area on the Costa del Azahar.

Spain Kingdom in Southwest Europe

Spain, officially the Kingdom of Spain, is a country mostly located in Europe. Its continental European territory is situated on the Iberian Peninsula. Its territory also includes two archipelagoes: the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa, and the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea. The African enclaves of Ceuta, Melilla, and Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera make Spain the only European country to have a physical border with an African country (Morocco). Several small islands in the Alboran Sea are also part of Spanish territory. The country's mainland is bordered to the south and east by the Mediterranean Sea except for a small land boundary with Gibraltar; to the north and northeast by France, Andorra, and the Bay of Biscay; and to the west and northwest by Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean.

Translations

Ed Emery has carried out an authorised English translation. [4]

Further reading

Methuen Publishing Ltd is an English publishing house. It was founded in 1889 by Sir Algernon Methuen (1856–1924) and began publishing in London in 1892. Initially Methuen mainly published non-fiction academic works, eventually diversifying to encourage female authors and later translated works. E. V. Lucas headed the firm from 1924 to 1928.

International Standard Book Number Unique numeric book identifier

The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a numeric commercial book identifier which is intended to be unique. Publishers purchase ISBNs from an affiliate of the International ISBN Agency.

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References

  1. 1 2 Mitchell 1999, p. 75
  2. ↑ Mitchell 1999, p. 76
  3. ↑ Rebora, Roberto (October 1963). Sipario. p. 28. Cited in Mitchell, Tony (1999). The People's Jester. London: Methuen Books
  4. ↑ English translation: http://www.geocities.ws/dariofoarchive/isabella.html
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